Transcript

Guy Nolch: James Culley was only 2 years old when he was bitten by a Sydney funnel-web spider but his death earned him his place in history as the last Australian to die from a bite of this deadly arachnid. It was January 1980 and an anti-venom for the funnel-web was still 11 months away.

Struan Sutherland was leading the research into an anti-venom at Commonwealth Serum Laboratories. Only 12 months earlier he had published a paper in The Lancet describing the pressure-immobilisation technique he had developed as the preferred method for first aid in cases of snake bite.

Further experiments on monkeys found that this technique also worked with the funnel-web, although this was too late for the 2 year old. Only a month after Culley's death, Sutherland was suspended from duties after a dispute with CSL's director, Doctor Neville McCarthy, over funding cuts.

This was neither the first nor the last battle Sutherland fought over support for venom research and when CSL was privatised in 1994 he found his venom research had reached a dead end. Anti-venoms were not a profitable pursuit for the new business so it closed down the venom research and offered Sutherland what he describes as "involuntary redundancy".

However, Sutherland looked elsewhere and established links with Melbourne University's Department of Pharmacology. Its Chair, Professor James Angus, offered him an Associate Professorship to resuscitate his venom research through the establishment of the Australian Venom Research Unit.

However, the Unit only had a one-off grant from CSL to establish it. Sutherland needed ongoing funding to support the staff he had rescued from CSL, but the Federal Labor Party at the time showed no interest.

Fortunately, Victoria's Kennett government came to the party with an ongoing grant of $100,000. With Sutherland now retired, that money now pays the modest salaries of the Unit's director and deputy.

However, the demise of the Kennett government may also bring about the demise of venom research in Australia, because Victoria's new Labor government will pull the rug out from under the AVRU's feet at the end of the next month. This is the same government that has been pumping out press releases about the $310 million it is investing in biomedical research over five years, funding that was allocated in the Kennett government's final budget.

Despite the size of the kitty it has set aside for medical research, the current Bracks government is arguing that Victoria should not foot the bill for venom research that benefits all Australians. The AVRU, it says, should be funded by the Commonwealth.

While this argument is small-minded, it does have some merit. After all, the Commonwealth pocketed $300 million from the sale of CSL, which now has an obligation to private shareholders and not the public good. It is now the responsibility of the Commonwealth to invest the proceeds of that sale in the national interest. As Australia is home to dozens of the most venomous creatures in the world, ongoing venom research is clearly in the national interest. And $100,000 per year is loose change from the annual interest that the Commonwealth has been earning from the sale of CSL.

The nation gets good value from this loose change. Each year more than 3,000 taxpayers seek medical help after an encounter with the hundred or so dangerous snakes, spiders, insects and marine creatures that call Australia and its waters home. Doctors seeking a second opinion can call the AVRU's 24 hour help line to identify the likely culprit and receive advice about the most appropriate treatment.

Additionally, the AVRU is examining morbidity and mortality data for Australia's venomous creatures with a view to determining priorities for research and management. And since Australia has been a world leader in anti-venoms, March marked the 70th anniversary of the first use of tiger snake anti-venom, further work is determining the efficacy of Australian anti-venoms for use against venomous creatures in other countries, such as Papua New Guinea.

The Unit's present research program is investigating how many jellyfish cause Irukandji syndrome, which in April left a Perth woman in a critical condition. It is also studying whether redback anti-venom can be used to treat cases of necrotising arachnidism due to bites by the cupboard or brown house spider, which is found throughout Australia and can cause blistering of the skin.

Additional funding may enable the Unit to resume Sutherland's research into immunotherapy for people with bee and ant venom allergies; 1 in 200 people have a systemic reaction to bee venom and twice as many people die from bee stings than shark attacks each year. Amazingly, more deaths in Tasmania are due to ant bite allergies than encounters with any other venomous creature.

Obviously the Victorian and Federal governments need to cooperate to ensure the ongoing survival of the AVRU. While the Victorian government has a duty to keep the Unit's doors open, eventually the Commonwealth government's short arms will have to dig into the deep pockets that have recently funded tax relief for petrol, beer and caravan parks.